Writing in the Archives
BEGINS Thursday, March 28, 2024
5:00 PM-8:00 PM
UNE, Maine Women Writers Collection, Portland, Maine (map)
A 5 Week IN-PERSON Research and Writing Workshop
Thursdays, March 28-May 2
ALL LEVELS
Do you draw inspiration from the past? Are you someone who likes to hold the past in your hands? Do you appreciate the distinctive scrawl of cursive handwriting? Do you especially enjoy the craftsmanship of objects from the 19th century? If you answered yes, or anything close to yes, then get thee to an archive!
The class will serve as an introduction to archives, as well as to the use of primary source materials to support/enhance your writing. The class will be based at Maine Women Writers Collection at UNE Portland, and will include field trips to both USM Portland’s and USM Lewiston’s Special Collections. The class is an all-genres class, and will include a wide variety of writing exercises and research activities, as well as dedicated time to research projects. We will read and discuss archives-based work by writers such as Susan Howe, Robert Walser, Dawn Potter, and Kiki Petrosino. There will also be time to workshop one piece of archives-based writing from each participant.
PLEASE NOTE This workshop will occur IN-PERSON at the Maine Women Writers Collection at UNE in Portland, 3 Thursdays, with field trips to the Special Collections at USM Portland and USM Lewiston. The week of the workshop, students will be emailed the meeting place for that week.
Jefferson Navicky is the author of four books, most recently the novel-in-prose-poems, Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands (2023), as well as Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments in Short Prose (2021), which won the 2022 Maine Literary Award for Poetry. His fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Electric Literature, Fairy Tale Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Jefferson works as the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection. He is the recipient of grants from the Maine Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, as well as two additional Maine Literary Awards for poetry and drama.
